A new report released Thursday by data provider SNL Financial found that the country’s five largest banks own 44% of the industry’s total assets. That continues a march higher that has been going on since at least 1990, when 9.67% of the industry’s total assets came from the top five banks.

“Total assets concentrated in the five largest banking institutions have steadily increased since 1990, reaching a peak in the third quarter of this year,” said SNL analyst Marshall Schraibman in his report.

J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo and U.S. Bank held $6.46 trillion in assets as of the third quarter of 2013, SNL found. The rest of the industry, comprised of thousands of midsize, regional and smaller players, held a total of $8.15 trillion.

In 1990, the five largest financial institutions held $457.92 billion, or 9.67% of the industry’s total assets, according to the research firm.
The top five banks in 1990 were predecessors to the top five institutions today.

Mr. Schraibman said varying narratives have developed to explain the concentration of assets. Some argue that new regulatory burdens make banking overly costly for smaller institutions. Others say the history of consolidation that created “too big to fail” institutions are still impacting the banking sector today.

While some observers had predicted a wave of M&A among smaller institutions to deal with the increased regulatory costs, Mr. Schraibman said those deals have failed to “move the needle” in terms of asset concentration. Mergers among big banks are largely a thing of the past, due to heightened regulatory concerns after the financial crisis.

One other trend noted by Mr. Schraibman was that the median return on average assets for the top five institutions today is nearly 50% higher than the overall industry. That’s in sharp contrast to the return on average assets in 1990, where the largest institutions trailed the sector by 0.33 percentage points.